


Whole

by whentheynameyoujoy



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Ahch-To training, F/M, Fix-It, Force Bond (Star Wars), Funny how ST ended with TLJ, Gen, Gray side of the Force, Luke wants Bendemption, Meditation, Not Canon Compliant, OOC Luke, References to Han and Rey scenes that never happened, Reylo if you squint, Very much done before but I needed to get this out of my head so that I can forget about ST existing, force skype
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-29
Updated: 2019-12-29
Packaged: 2021-02-27 15:48:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,924
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22019644
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whentheynameyoujoy/pseuds/whentheynameyoujoy
Summary: "There is no Light, no Dark. There is only the thrum of existence, the endless push and pull of life and death, feeding into each other, sustaining each other, the infinite tension between the two, the harmony."When Rey arrives at Ahch-To for her Jedi training, it doesn't go as she thought it would.
Relationships: Rey & Luke Skywalker, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 4
Kudos: 12





	Whole

**Author's Note:**

> Honestly, nothing revolutionary to see here—just my super-fresh, super-timely, super-relevant, never-done-before, basic take on that TLJ training scene if Luke were less of a hostile, responsibility-shirking asshole and the sequel trilogy had any point or unifying theme whatsoever. Any canon divergences beside the ones noted in the tags can be chalked up to the fact that I indeed am the filthiest of filthy casuals (expanded uniwot?)

“All right, that is pretty much nowhere.”

Rey nods, her mouth full as she washes the dense bread down with green milk, stomach clenching. The milk is still warm and the taste makes her gag but she doesn’t care. The years on Jakku are in her marrow, the memories of hunger never satisfied, only kept at bay and barely at that. It taught her to always take whatever is on offer and not question where it comes from, even if it does vaguely smell like happabore droppings.

“Why do you even want to be a Jedi?”

She is working on a huge bite of some fleshy fruit, her jaw hurting from the effort, so she keeps it simple. “I whant to leahrn…” He raises his eyebrows and she swallows the big lump whole. “I want to learn how to fight.”

Luke snorts and leans back in the sturdy chair, arms folded over his chest. “Any old grump could teach you how to fight, you don’t need me for that. Sithspit, if you truly are from Jakku you could probably teach me a move or two yourself.”

For a moment, Rey considers the earthen plate on the table, unable to find the right words. “Because back on Ilum, I did _things_ , things I had no idea I could do, things I had no idea _anyone_ could do. And for a while after that I thought that something happened, that maybe the base or h— that maybe someone gave this power to me. But then I realized, I’ve always felt it, this, this… It’s like… it’s like something thrumming in me, like an engine, always humming, so quiet you don’t even know it’s there. And one day it roared to life. And I need you to, to help me control it, I suppose. To use it. So that I could protect myself. Protect others.” She wiggles her fingers to get the crumbs off and continues breezily, “Anyway, Han said that the Jedi were pretty much the only game in town when it came to this sort of stuff.”

It doesn’t feel right, lying to her future master when he’s trying to figure out if she would make a worthy apprentice. But being vulnerable in front of someone she doesn’t really know goes against every fibre of her being, especially where it concerns something she is just beginning to admit to herself.

_I need to be a Jedi because I have no clue what I am otherwise. Because this may be where I belong._

Luke nods, absent-minded. “What do you know about the Jedi?”

Rey perks up and begins reciting from memory. This, this she can do. “I know that you’re the guardians of order and justice in the galaxy and you’re that because unlike anyone else you can tap into this, into this, _thing_ that’s in everything living, in me and you and just everything, the Force that allows you to go against the bad guys who are hurting people and put them in their place, like that. Oh, oh, and you yourself, you’re the best out of anyone because your connection to the Force is so strong you’ve managed to restore it to balance when the Dark side destroyed it. You went against the Dark side and killed it. You killed it dead.”

He stares at her, eyes wide. “I’ve restored the balance to the Force… by killing the Dark part of it dead.”

Rey nods.

“And that makes sense to you?”

She shakes her head. It didn’t made sense to her when Han told her about it, it didn’t made sense when she later tried to get her head around it, and Luke’s expression surely isn’t helping her understand now. But she doesn’t let it dishearten her; if she understood Jedi wisdom right away, there would be no need for seeking a master, would it?

Luke scoffs, looking away. “Restoring balance… what a joke.” He is silent for a while, staring at the floor of the stone hut. “Tell me, Rey from Jakku, how do you earn your living in that nowhere of yours?”

She shrugs and licks her fingers clean. “I’m a scavenger.”

“That’s it? Just a scavenger?”

“Well, no. Unkar had me employed in his junkyard, too, install that part or another, repair a thing here or there if he thought he could get a good price. You know, the works.”

“A mechanic, then. Any amusing stories that go with a job like that?” He raises his eyebrows at her befuddled look. “You’ve drunk my entire daily ration of milk and didn’t even seem to enjoy it. I think I deserve at least one tale of mirth as a thank you.”

“Erm, all right.” Rey racks her brain, trying to recall anything that wasn’t be a story of Unkar dishing out beatings if she messed up or swindling clients by putting in low-grade components. Those are the furthest from her notion of amusing. “Oh, I have one. You ever flown an X-34?”

The corners of Luke’s mouth twitch. “I’ve had the pleasure, yes.”

“So you know how testy the girl can get if you don’t keep her in a tip-top condition. Which means sooner or later you’re going to need spare parts. Lots of them. Unkar actually managed to get a little side business going by retrofitting the old junk so that it wouldn’t fall out of sky. That’s how many people use it on Jakku. Anyway, one day a guy comes around the junkyard, unloads a few parts of the P-s4 on the ground, and wants me to mod his X-34 with them, so old it must have remembered the clone wars and with maintenance to go with that. Says he’s kinda strapped for credits, needs to cut his fuel costs down, and ion drive would help. You know, the one that TIE fighters use? The one that’s too powerful for anything not used in the outer space? Unkar’s already collected his money for the work so he doesn’t give a damn. As I’m attaching the solar collector, I’m telling the guy what a bad idea this is but he doesn’t care. Just cram it in and somehow make it work.”

Luke smirks. “I see where this is going.”

“He gets into the speeder, and as soon as he switches the ignition on, the whole thing shoots forward from under him, so hard it throws him out of the cockpit. Even with a single collector, the engine just takes way too much power from the sun and all you can see is this huge dust path as the speeder zooms to the horizon, parts flying everywhere. Guy’s slumped on the ground, yelling at me for messing up, but what can I do? Go back in time and make him listen to me? Unkar later had me go into the desert and scavenge the parts for days, the P-s4 _and_ X-34. I didn’t even get an extra portion out of it because he said he’d already paid me for the work.”

Luke chuckles. “Your boss sounds like a real son of a blaster.”

“Yeah,” she laughs. “So what, you will train me as a Jedi now?”

Luke looks at her with what seems like sadness in his eyes. “No,” he says softly.

Rey gapes at him. “B-but I thoug—”

“What you’re asking me to do, Rey,” Luke interrupts, leaning forward, “is to jam an ion engine into a landspeeder and somehow make it not run away from under you. Because that’s what the Jedi are—a dated piece of junk no longer fit for purpose, if it ever was. We maintain the peace and order, that’s what we tell the galaxy and ourselves. And yet wherever we turn up, war and chaos follow.”

“But Han sai—“

“I can very well imagine what he said. That I went up against the Emperor, a simple ray of farm boy sunshine, scattering darkness through the sheer power of my goodness, ushering in an era of peace and prosperity with no speck of the Dark to be found. That’s what he would call balance. That’s what the Jedi in their arrogance would call balance. Do you know why? Because the Jedi don’t _use_ the Force. They violate it.” He reaches for the pile of tomes on the table, takes out two blades of grass he must have been using as bookmarks, and twists them together. “The Force of the Jedi, it’s like two snakes, entwined but separate, constantly battling for dominance. A balance is struck when, and only when, the Dark side is suppressed by the Light. By the Good.”

Rey listens, entranced.

“But that’s not the Force as it actually is. The Force you’re talking about, the one you feel within you, it’s not two snakes. It’s a single whole. There is no Light, no Dark. There is only the thrum of existence, the endless push and pull of life and death, feeding into each other, sustaining each other, the infinite tension between the two, the harmony. That’s the balance of the Force. You can separate the Light from the Dark no better than you can cut the snake in half and claim to have two. But that’s what being a Jedi is about. To use the Force like a Jedi, you have to tear it apart. To be a Jedi, you must destroy the harmony.”

“Is that why you’re here?” Rey hears herself peep. “Because you destroyed the harmony?”

She can hear the rustle of leaves in the silence that fills the cottage, toxic like a poisonous gas.

“Yes,” Luke whispers finally. “The fall of the Republic, the resurgence of the Dark, the one you know as Kylo Ren, all of it came to be because I didn’t understand what it was that allowed us to win the war. Or maybe I did and forgot. Love. Redemption. Acceptance. Forgiveness. Healing. All of it faded in my mind because I was too busy looking for the Dark, waiting for it to return, to destroy what we fought so hard to build. To harm the ones we loved. In the end, I became so consumed by the dread that I did the harming myself.”

Rey is startled to see the faraway affection with which Luke regards her. “My last padawan, he was very much like you. Brash, eager to learn, not fond of fresh milk either. And as I later realized, already broken in so many small ways it’d be impossible to count them. I suppose that’s what the murmurs were, the flashes of the Dark I saw whenever he looked at me. A cry for help. Pain and confusion, doubt and loneliness. But not to me. To me, they were weakness. Danger. To the enemy, they were an opportunity. And so one night, when the murmurs turned into a voice, the one I’d spent so much time waiting for, I…” His gaze drops to the floor. “For a second, I could no longer see the boy, only the evil within. So I did what I believed worked last time. I attempted to kill him, not realizing the sheer power of the Force in him. It allowed him to escape, run away from his life of hurt to what he thought were loving arms.”

He chuckles unhappily. “Would you believe it? So many years I’d been using my Jedi training to protect what was supposed to be a new beginning, and yet it was I in my Jedi wisdom who strangled it in the crib. By trying to destroy the Dark side, I created its greatest weapon.”

Eyes to the floor, he sighs. “So I fled. I left everything and everyone behind because I had to find a way to make it all good again. To heal the wound I tore open. To bring Ben home. But I’m no closer to doing that than I was back then. Jedi wisdom, eh.” He gestures towards the books, contempt etched in his face. “The only thing the years of study taught me is that there isn’t any. And I’m too old now, too old to start over. I can no longer feel the Force, the real Force, only its splinters. I can’t heal the rift in it or him. In that sense, I truly am the last Jedi.”

Looking up, he fixes her with a gaze so sad it’s like a punch in the gut. “I have nothing to teach you, Rey. The only thing I can do is hurt you. And I’m through with that.”

Somewhere outside, a door slams shut and neither of them says anything for a while. Rey sits at the table, staring into her lap, throat tight and chest clenched, struggling to breathe in yet another home that will never be hers.

Feeling the restless hunger reawaken beneath her ribs, she rubs at her cheeks and gives a wet laugh. “So anyway, I think your sister would really love to see you.”

Luke smiles. “And I would really love to see her.”

If there’s one thing Rey can’t complain about lacking aboard the _Falcon_ , it’s time. Once the ship escapes Ahch-To’s gravitational pull and enters hyperspace, their journey to Crait becomes little more than a contest in finding the best way to stave off an impending death of boredom.

Considering the sheer amount of things Chewie, Luke, and R2-D2 have to catch up on, Rey is unlikely to win.

But instead of popping her clogs or yet again wondering who in their right mind would bother putting a hyperdrive into a rust bucket missing basic crew quarters, she decides to practice.

“It’s not really a Jedi technique,” Luke said. “You don’t even have to be Force sensitive to use it. Still, it helps with calming your thoughts. Sometimes, if you’re lucky, it helps you find clarity. And hey, if you learn to do it in here, trust me—you’ll be able to do it anywhere.”

And so she sweeps into a gunner bay and makes herself comfortable in the swivel seat, the leathery upholstery creaking as she shifts her weight.

“All right,” she whispers and closes her eyes. “Here goes nothing.”

_Breathe in._

_Breathe out._

_Breathe in._

_Breathe out._

_Breathe in._

_Breathe out._

_Forget your ego._

_Breathe in._

_Focus on the air in your body._

_Breathe out._

_Entering and leaving._

_Breathe in._

_Running along your spine._

_Breathe out._

_Feeding your muscles._

_Breathe in._

_Expanding your ribcage._

_Breathe out._

_Straightening your back._

_Breathe in._

_Feel it in the tip of your toes._

_Breathe out._

_Let the thoughts come._ _Breathe in._

 _Don’t chase them._ _Breathe out._

 _Just take note of them._ _Breathe in._

 _Let them float away._ _Breathe out._ _Be one with the Force._

 _Breathe in._ _Open yourself to it. Breathe out._

 _Be its vessel. Breathe in._ _Let it fill you. Breathe out._

 _See where it takes you. Breathe in._ _Don’t fight it, just follow it. Breathe out._

 _Observe, don’t judge. Breathe in._ _Like a river, you have no control over its flow._

_Breathe in, like a river, running in its bed, the oil burbling in the pipes, breathe out, lubricating the engine, the parts clicking together, breathe in, the walls vibrating, the grates rattling, breathe out, the corridors alive with voices, the hum of the ship, hurtling through space, breathe in, suspended in place, alone in the dark, alone in the cold, the absence of light, breathe out, the absence of warmth, surrounded by death, surrounded by nothing, breathe in, emptiness, endless void, alone, not going anywhere, breathe out, lonely, the roar of the engines, the exhausts burning in the blue sky, a hand clasping her arm, abandoned, breathe in, unwanted, the pain in her throat, screaming, the walker’s walls, covered in marks, the pillow wet with tears, the graveyard looming, silent, empty, forgotten, dust dancing in the sunlight, no escape, waiting, waiting, waiting, the sand cold beneath her feet, blue in the moon, eyes aching and the sky, clear and empty, the hunger gnawing, consuming, waiting and empty, growing, a hole in her stomach, always there, the pain stabbing, anger blazing red in the night, blood on the snow and the whooshing of death, falling into the void and lost, gone, the vapours swirling and beneath them, light and dark, the rage hot and buzzing, filling her with the crashing of sabers, the red and blue merging, becoming one, and in the purple, eyes staring at her, black holes, empty and alone, drawing her in and drowning, and then silence, the thumping of a heart, thump-thump, thump-thump, thump-thump, the eyes looking, thump-thump, thump-thump, seeking, thump-thump, finding._

_Thump-thump._

_Full._

_Thump._

_There._

“W-wha—”

Rey’s eyes fly open.

He’s there, right in front of her in the middle of a Star Destroyer bridge, surrounded by officers and gaping at her, his face frozen in surprise.

Before she even thinks of reaching for a blaster, he’s gone and she’s left staring into the blue flashes of hyperspace, the silence filling with the sounds of raucous laughter coming from down the corridor, washing her shock away with recognition.

She’s shoved back into her body, sweaty and strangely worn out. But when her confusion gives way to disgust, the hunger returns, as strong as the first time she felt it, the pain of it sharp enough to make her cry out. And in that bottomless pit, tendrils of something disappear, out of reach like a fading dream, fizzling out just as she tries to hold onto it.

The thing she craves, the feeling she’d never known.

Full.

There.

Whole.

**Author's Note:**

> Possible SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS for The Rise of Skywalker!!  
> So, I’ve just seen TROS and holy fuckballs, if that wasn’t some hardcore abortion of storytelling. I had quite a few [reservations](https://whentheynameyoujoy.tumblr.com/post/168635308770/kylo-ren-is-getting-a-zuko-redemption-arc-and) about the mess of rushed concepts that was TLJ, let alone about its potential to organically unite the sequel trilogy, but Jesus Christ, even I wasn’t expecting this. They’ve really flushed any semblance of thematic coherence down the toilet, didn’t they?
> 
> And it would have been so simple. You’ve got Rey, an abandoned nobody seeking belonging, and Ben, the goodest among good bois who’s known nothing but suffering and abuse (if you know about the tie-in materials, that is; if you haven’t, and honestly why should anyone be expected to, then emo space Nazi, ahoy), coming together to mend the hole in themselves and each other, uniting the Force and thus ending the infinite cycle of war that’s plagued the galaxy due to the Jedi and Sith slapping each other for a thousand generations. There—that’s your sequel trilogy. How do you fuck this up, I don’t know, but J.J. found the way.
> 
> So that’s what this fic is—me, formulating to myself what the ST could have been if anyone bothered to ask themselves why they were even making it, and zeroing in on that one scene in the whole trilogy I can identify as thematically relevant. I might get inspired to write some more stand-alone short Reylo fics in this vein in the future but right now I’m so done with this universe it’s not even funny.


End file.
